C. Box - Free Fire

She began to say, “You don’t need to stop. .” when she recognizedhim. Her eyes widened and her mouth pulled back in a grimace and she inadvertently stepped back, knocking a sheaf of Yellowstone News flyers to the ground outside her box. “My God,” she mouthed.

“Have a pleasant night,” he said, basking in her reaction, knowing now, for sure, he’d entered the rarified air of celebrity.

He’d been away for nearly three months. During that time, Clay McCann had gone from a semi-obscure small-town lawyer specializing in contracts and criminal defense law to beingknown both nationally and internationally. For a brief time, every utterance he made to reporters inside the tiny jailhouse at Mammoth Hot Springs made the wire services. Profiles of him and the Yellowstone Zone of Death appeared in a half-dozen nationalpublications. For a delicious week or two, his face and the crime were as familiar to viewers of twenty-four-hour cable networks as any celebrity criminal or victim. His arguments beforethe court were dissected by celebrity lawyers who predicted,correctly, that he’d win, which he did. Although the federal prosecutors threatened loudly to appeal the decision to the Tenth Circuit and the Supreme Court, the thirty days allowedto file had lapsed and he’d received no notification. McCannbanked on the assumption that the Feds didn’t want the case to go further with the very likely possibility that higher courts would have to declare that the Zone of Death actually existed.

He was as free as those buffalo back on the road. Originally, the news of the murders burned bright and his face was everywhere.Reporters and cameramen camped out on the lawn of the old Yellowstone jail, sharing the grass with grazing elk. But the story soon became eclipsed by the circumstances. He faded out of it, and other crimes that had more appeal-like blondes found missing on islands or cruise ships-overtook the hard-to-understandconcept of vicinage and the Sixth Amendment, and he was discarded onto the electronic landfill of old news. It was expensive, a reporter told him, for the network to keep a team out there in the middle of nowhere with little to report. Plus, he complained, there was nothing to do at night for the crew. Eventually,they all left. But McCann had no doubt he was still hot stuff up and down the Rocky Mountains.

He drove through the empty, familiar streets of West Yellowstone as the few overhead lights charged, hummed, and lit against the coming darkness. His house was located in a cul-de-sac within a stand of thick lodgepole pines west of town. His neighbors were a doctor and a fly-fishing guide who had turned his name into a well-known brand. The doctor and guide were among the elite in town and it was an exclusive, if tiny, neighborhood.McCann had acquired his house in a foreclosure auction,but nevertheless.

As he pulled into his driveway he saw immediately that his house had been vandalized. The windows were broken and FILTHY FUCKING MURDERER was spray-painted in red on the front door, drips of paint crawling down the wood like dried blood.

He charged up the walk and kicked through weeks of porch-deliverednewspapers and entered his dark house to find the power and water shut off. He experienced a moment of overwhelmingdespair: How could they expect me to keep up with the local bills when I was incarcerated?

Retrieving a flashlight from his car, he returned to his home as despair sharpened into quiet rage. His house reeked of spoiled food from inside the refrigerator and freezer. He didn’t even open them. Long-dead tropical fish floated in a slick of scum on the top of his fish tank. His cat was long gone, althoughhe’d shredded most of his living room furniture and sprayed the carpet in his bedroom before finding his way out.

Drawers and closet doors were agape, clothing thrown across the floors by investigating cops. His telephone was ripped from the wall for no good reason at all. His bookcase was ransacked, emptied, law books tossed into piles along with the military thrillers he liked to read. Holes were punched into his walls as they looked for. . what? What were they trying to find and why were they trying to find it? The case wasn’t a mystery,after all.

What made him angriest was to visualize the slow-witted localcops and park rangers rooting through his personal belongings,reading his mail, laughing, no doubt, at his collection of pornography in the drawer of his nightstand and finding- Jesus -the cardboard box containing the stuffed animals from his childhood that he just couldn’t make himself throw away. He wondered how many people knew about that. If somebody said something about the box in town, he vowed, he’d sue their ass so fast it would leave skid marks.

No note of apology, no crime-scene tape, no acknowledgmentof what they’d done. They simply trashed the place and left it for vandals.

He would need protection. Some yahoo might try to take him down, try to become famous for killing the man who beat the system. These people here liked that kind of rough frontier justice. Unfortunately, the Park Service hadn’t returned his weapons and he’d have to threaten a suit to get them back. As he drafted the action in his head, he remembered something. Months before, a client charged with his third DUI had paid him a retainer consisting of cash and a.38 snub-nosed revolver. The lawyer had dropped the gun into a manila envelope and filed it among his casework portfolios in his home office. Remarkably,the cops had missed it. He retrieved the gun and checked the loads, more familiar with weapons than he used to be, and slid it into his jacket pocket. It felt solid and heavy against his hip. He liked how it felt.

Pausing on the porch among the litter of unopened mail and newspapers, McCann took a deep breath of cold air. It tasted faintly of pinecone dust and wood smoke. He fought against the dark specter of being absolutely alone.

Because it was late in the year, only locals were out. McCanndrove to Rocky’s, a local favorite they all raved about like it was Delmonico’s, but he found more or less passable. It was both a bar and a restaurant, one big room. He wanted a beer and a burger, something they couldn’t mess up. Ninety days of jail food had screwed up his system.

The place was humming with raucous conversation as he entered,and it took a moment to get the bartender’s eye. When he did, the man simply looked at him with tight-lipped trepidation as if he were a ghost, a demon, or Senator Teddy Kennedy.

Then the din started to fade, and it continued to diminish untilit was almost silent inside. McCann felt nearly every set of eyes in the restaurant on him. He heard whispers:

“Oh my God, look who’s here.”

“It’s Clay McCann.”

“What’s he think he’s doing here?”

A few of the men’s faces hardened into deadeye stares, as if challenging him to start something. A young mother covered the eyes of her child, as if she thought simply seeing him would scar the little tyke for life.

Even though he’d expected this reception, it still came as a sour jolt. Sure, he was used to indirect derision and whispered asides because he was a lawyer. Lawyers made enemies. But this was full-scale, almost overpowering. His only solace was the knowledge that it would be short-term and that he had a.38 in his pocket.

He looked back at them, not without fear. Eight percent, he thought. Look for the eight percent. Take comfort in the eight percent.

Early in his career, before he messed up, McCann had been a criminal defense attorney in Minot, North Dakota, after he’d fled Chicago to avoid that ethics charge. He’d been lucky enough to land a deep-pockets client almost immediately-a North Dakota banker accused of hiring thugs to kill his wife. The case was considered a slam-dunk conviction by the prosecution,and it looked hopeless to McCann. Because splitting the fee was better than losing the case outright, McCann brought in Marcus Hand, the flamboyant Wyoming trial lawyer who was famous for four things: long white hair, buckskin clothing, delaysthat sweetened the payout for the lawyers, and his ability to persuade a jury. McCann watched Hand perform in the courtroomand the Wyoming lawyer nearly convinced McCann himselfthat his client didn’t do it. Eventually, the jury deadlocked at 10-2, and couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict. In the retrial a year later, Hand managed to create almost the same result, with an 11-1 hung jury. Although the embarrassed prosecutors let it be known that they would bring the case to trial a third time, it never happened. The doctor walked away into bankruptcy and into the arms of his pretty, new twenty-five-year-old wife.